


Let Your Albatross Go

by yaysunshine



Category: Scion (Tabletop RPG)
Genre: 2010s, Amatsukami, Backstory, Gen, TBD IC Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 10:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6419617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yaysunshine/pseuds/yaysunshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2012, Liz Kawaguchi quits her job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Your Albatross Go

She’s a hundred miles out of town in a rented U-Haul (well, she _hopes_ rented; the day is a blur) by the time everything catches up to her. A sudden panic rises up from her chest into her head, making her ears buzz and her vision blur. She jerks the wheel abruptly to the right, causing the tires to screech worryingly — but manages to settle comfortably onto the shoulder of the largely-empty highway without incident.

For a while she just sits there in the dark quiet of the nighttime highway with her eyes shut, breathing in, breathing out — until she no longer feels like she's about to suffocate. She lets her hands relax and takes them off the wheel, and then goes to dig in her bag for her phone, to scroll through a day’s worth of emails and calls to make sure of what's _real_.

Yes, she quit her job, she remembers that right. A lot of calls from an unidentified number — oh, wait. Apparently somewhere in there she deleted her mother’s number from her phone. Fun. A look at the GPS says this van is somewhere in West Virginia. She studies the map for a moment, then turns off the cell service. Harder to find that way, since she’s sure someone will come looking for her eventually. And she doesn’t want to go back.

Even as much as she _does_ want to go back. By doing this she’s leaving behind everything she’s ever known, everything she’s ever planned, everything she thought she ever wanted. It’s just that every time she thinks about it, a raw feeling of terror washes over her, like she’s drowning, sinking into some bottomless black pit.

In the next city she’ll ditch her phone and buy a new one with one of the cards not linked to her name. What the hell is she going to do after that, though? She's never even _considered_ doing anything else, except for a few brief months in middle school when she insisted that she wanted to be an artist like her dad.

Well—she’s still got that Master’s in Forestry from that time she was really involved in Greenpeace. First time it’s ever been good for anything. Probably still some folks from school who'd remember her well enough to give a good reference and wouldn’t ask too many questions about the different last name. She’ll put together a resume and check if the parks service is hiring anywhere, tell them she can start immediately if they want. Preferably somewhere in the middle of nowhere. She’s always liked the west, and it’ll be nice to finally get to some of the parks that aren’t Mount Rushmore.

There’s a lot of unknown variables and a hell of a lot of wishful thinking in that plan, but it’s the best one she’s got. And there’s anything she’s good at, it’s going with the flow. She's sure as long as she has a place to go to ground she can disappear anywhere. (Thanks for that one, Mom.)

She just needs… some space. And some time. To sort things out, to calm down, to see what a life free of the the terrible burden of destiny might look like. To figure out what she _actually_ wants.

(A voice in the back of her head suggests that might take longer than her lifetime. But right now that doesn't sound like a negative.)

She takes a deep breath, turns on the radio, puts her hands back on the wheel. She feels like she's about to jump out of a plane with a 50/50 chance of a parachute being attached. But she's okay with that.

"All right, Elizabeth," she says to herself, and then frowns. No, that doesn't feel right anymore. She can't say it without hearing her mother's voice.

There was what her then-friends had called her, back in her Greenpeace days—"Liz. All right, Liz." Yeah, that sounds right. Her foot hovers over the accelerator, and she shifts back into drive.

"Here goes nothing."


End file.
